7-Month-Old Beams in New Glasses After Seeing Dad Clearly for Very First Time Following Surgery
A toddler’s vision has been saved thanks to his attentive parents and a dedicated medical team devoted to helping children with visual impairments.
When baby Theo Bennett came home, he joined his two older brothers and parents, Lois and Joe Bennett. But Lois and Joe soon noticed troubling symptoms in their youngest son’s eyes.
Despite the family’s consistent attempts to interact with their baby, Theo did not seem to be “engaging visually with the world around him,” Fox News reported.
When Theo was around six months old, Lois noticed her baby’s eyes were cloudy. Soon thereafter, Theo was diagnosed with congenital cataracts, a rare childhood condition that threatened to take his vision if not properly treated.
In October 2018, Theo underwent a five-hour surgery at the Children’s Eye Clinic at St. James’s Hospital in Leeds, England. The surgery’s success was immediately apparent to Theo’s relieved parents.
“As soon as Theo opened his eyes after the operation you could see him looking around like he’d never done before,” Joe Bennett, 37, told The Leeds Teaching Hospitals. “You could tell straight away that he was seeing more.”
Toddler diagnosed with pediatric cataracts after mom noticed cloudiness in eyes: ‘His world was closing in’ pic.twitter.com/n6HuzdtoSy
— PlayNews (@PlayNews7) September 12, 2019
“It was wonderful — just like when you see the reaction of people who are able to hear for the first time. And when Theo got his first pair of glasses his little face lit up when he could see clearly for the first time. That was very special.”
A few weeks after the surgery, Theo was fitted with his first pair of eyeglasses. As the seventh-month-old grinned in amazement, his parents were overcome with emotion.
“When he put the glasses on, he looked at me with a big smile and you could see him looking around,” Joe told the SWNS news agency, according to Inside Edition. “It melts your heart because you think to yourself, ‘He can actually see now.'”
Joe and Lois could hardly wait to watch their son soak up all the wonderful scenes he had been missing.
“It was amazing, we took him out that afternoon and it was apparent that he was looking at the world around him like he’d never really done before,” Joe said.
Sixteen-month-old Theo Bennett is a picture of happiness after having his vision restored in an operation to remove cataracts from his eyes. His dad Joe is cycling the @Yorkshire2019 sportive for @Leeds_Cares to thank our teams who cared for his son. https://t.co/lDnM6I3TQ9 pic.twitter.com/wV07NRdxME
— Leeds Teaching Hospitals (@LeedsHospitals) July 21, 2019
Almost one year has passed since Theo’s cataract surgery and his parents are happy to report their son, now 18 months old, is flourishing.
They are thankful for the medical care team, and thankful Theo’s condition was diagnosed before it was too late to save his vision.
Reflecting on Theo’s early months at home, Joe said that at first, he and his wife had been “going on for seven months thinking everything was fine with our new baby but his world had been getting darker and darker. His world was closing in and it was like the curtains have been opened.”
“You think to yourself, what if we had not picked it up? What would he be doing now?” Joe said. “If we were at this time now and it had not been picked up he would be severely visually impaired.”
Theo’s doctors are optimistic that the boy will only need to wear his glasses for reading once his vision has had time to fully develop.
“It is just wonderful to see Theo beaming and smiling again,” Joe said. “From watching him struggle to where he is now we have seen such a change in him.”
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